Monk Warrior Strats Vs Iran

 By Mortz C. Ortigoza

While the diplomats of the United States and Iran look for a compromise at their indirect talks in Geneva for the juggernaut of the former not to rain her lethal munitions to the latter, I recalled how weak the hemming and hawing Obama Administration compared to the present Big Stick Diplomacy of the Trump Administration on how to deal with the Ayatollah, his executive brass, the Republican Guards, and the military in the former Biblical country’s Persia.

MONK WARRIOR (far left) attacking the elite Iranian Republican Guards while Ayatollah Ali Khamenei signals order.

As Central Command Commander from 2010 to 2013, Marine three-star General Jim ” Monk Warrior”  Mattis believed that Iran “remained the greatest threat to the United States interest in the Middle East.”

According to the 420 pages FEAR by Bob Woodward, “he (Mattis) was concerned that the Israelis were going to strike the Iranian nuclear facilities and pull the United States into the conflict”.

As we all know now, in June 13 – 24 2025 the Israelis through their “Operation Midnight Hammer” and the American bombarded the nuke facilities there located underground at the Fordow Uranium Enrichment Plant, the Natanz Nuclear Facility, and the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center.

But Mattis failed to predict in the middle of the 2010’s that the U.S would join the fray. Iran was targeted by the Trump military in the last days of the Operation Midnight Hammer with fourteen GBU-57A/B MOP "bunker buster" bombs carried by United States Air Force’s B-2 Spirit stealth bombers, and Tomahawk missiles fired from a submarine. According to President Donald Trump, US F-35 and F-22 fighters also entered Iran's airspace to draw its surface-to-air missiles, but no launches were detected.

Monk Warrior.

Mattis (born September 8, 1950) served as the 26th United States secretary of defense from 2017 to 2019. A retired Marine Corps four-star general, he commanded forces in the Gulf War, the War in Afghanistan, and the Iraq War. The Monk Warrior or called too as “Chaos” was commissioned in the Marine Corps through the Naval Reserve Officers' Training Corps after graduating from Central Washington University. He is unmarried and a voracious reader of books.

“He had 7,000 books in his library. “…(H)e had been totally devoted to the military with more than four decades of service. He was single-minded but calm…,”  Woodward stressed.

Mattis did not believe the U.S did not have enough military force in the Middle East and did not have robust rules of engagement. He wrote a memo to President Barrack Obama through Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta (a former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency in 2009 to 2011) seeking more authority to respond to Iranian provocations. He was worried that the Iranians might mine international waters and create an incident at sea that could escalate.

According to Woodward: “Tom Donilon, the National Security Adviser, answered Mattis. A memo, soon referred to as “the Donilon Memo,” directed that under no circumstances would Mattis take any action against Iran for mining international waters unless the mine was effectively dropped in the part of a U.S. warship and presented an imminent danger to the ship. The Donilon Memo would be one of the first orders Mattis RESCINDED (this writer’s emphasis) when he became Secretary of Defense”.

The elite Iran Republican Guards.

The Monk Warrior continued to beat the drum (of war) on Iran. He found the war plan for the Gulf country insufficient. It was all aviation dependent; all air power. It did not have a broad joint-force plan. The plan had five strike options – first against small Iranian boats, another against ballistic missiles, another against other weapons systems, and another for an invasion. “Strike Option Five” was the plan for destroying the Iranian nuclear program.

Mattis wrote a scathing memo to the chief of naval operations saying your Navy was completely unprepared for conflict in the Persian Gulf. Panetta told Mattis his stance on Iran put him in real trouble with the Obama White House. Give me something to counter that perception, he asked.

“I get paid to give my best military advice,” Mattis replied. “They make the policy decisions. I’m not going to change what I think to placate them. If I don’t have their confidence, then I go.”

Mattis was relieved five months earlier by Obama.

It will be Divine Justice if the U.S. strikes Iran this week or next week. I was in second year college taking Bachelor of Arts Major in Social Science when an October 31, 1983 colored Time Magazine whose glossy black and white front covered photo showed frantic U.S Marines carrying their wounded if not dead shrouded in dust comrade- in- arms on a stretcher with an all capital headline that screamed: CARNAGE IN BEIRUT while its subhead said: Mideast Madness Hits the Marines.  The rival Newsweek Mag on its October 31 issue showed the same frantic Marines with a tempered headline: The Marine Massacre.

Did I say I was in second year college when I diligently read those Mags? Yes Virginia! I was 16 years old and still a virgin that time – hahaha! --  but I (together with some of our classmates) had been spending hours in the library reading those stuffs. Are our contemporaries of today read with zeal international political and military news like we did in our time?

 Iran had been behind the terrorist bombing of the U.S. Marine Barracks in Beirut in 1983. Beirut is the capital Lebanon the country destroyed by Iran funded terrorist army’s Hezbollah but was defanged by the armed Israel on its operation that started in 2024.

The attack killed 220 Marines, one of the largest single day death tolls in the history of the Corps. Another 21 servicemen died, bringing the toll to 241 – the largest terrorist attack against the U.S before the 9/11.

U.S Marine four-star General James "Chaos" Mattis.

Before I end my blog/column, here’s an anecdote about the Warrior Monk according to collation of Woodward for his hardbound book’s FEAR:

“In the summer of 2013, (former SEAL Commander and) Vice Admiral Bob Harward was sent to MacDill Air Force Base in Florida to become deputy central commander to Mattis. He checked in to the BOQ, Bachelor Officer Quarters, worked a day, and went back to his room. All his belonging had been moved out. He was told everything had been moved to General Mattis’s house. Harward went over to the house. He walked into the kitchen and found General Mattis there, folding Harward’s underwear (we Flips, er, Filipinos called “brief”, te-heh!).”

“Sir,” Harward said, “what the fuck are you doing?”

“I did my laundry,” Matis said. “I figured I’d do yours, too.”